More Day Baseball?

The Cubs play more day games than anyone.
 Does anyone want to  emulate their record?

The Florida Marlins are finally going to play their home games in a stadium built for baseball next year. And the new ballpark, rising on the site once occupied by the Orange Bowl, will even have a retractable roof.

The obvious reasons for that are the heat and the penchant for late-day rain in southern Florida. Now fans will no longer have to ponder whether to make the trek to see the Marlins play in the midst of a thunderstorm. But the team has decided there's another benefit to the new park: more day games during the week.

As mlb.com reports, the location of the ballpark in a business district has the Marlins thinking games in the sunshine will be a draw for the workers in the area. The St. Louis Cardinals have long had a "businessman's special" staring time of noon. The theory behind it was that an extended lunch hour would be enough time to catch a game. I'm not sure how well that holds up now that games are much longer than two hours.

Back to Interleague Play

This weekend marks the return of interleague play. The marquee match-up is the Chicago Cubs first series in Boston against the Red Sox since the 1918 World Series. That series famously was the last title for the Sox until 2004. The Cubs haven't brought home the banner since 1908.

It makes for a good narrative. And throw in the recent reports speculating that the beloved Cubbies were paid by gamblers to throw the series and you have quite a yarn for the hype machine to spin.

I've never been a big fan of interleague play. I'd much rather see divisional rivals play each more. Those are the games that decide divisions and pennants. But the fans get into it, so I am probably in the minority. Living in the New York City area, I see and hear all the excitement leading up to a Yankees-Mets match-up.

As I wrote in April, I'd rather see a radical realignment of the leagues to take advantage of geographical and historical rivalries. I've heard some fans say they wouldn't like to see the Yanks and Mets play too many times. I've never read such complaints about the Dodgers and Giants -- either when they were in New York or after they moved west.